Cross-cultural dataset for the evolution of religion and morality project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Understanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes including institutions, norms, and practices that contributes to this phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests that one such process involves certain components of religious systems that may have fostered the expansion of human cooperation in a variety of ways, including both certain forms of rituals and commitment to particular types of gods. Using an experimental economic game, our team specifically tested whether or not individually held mental models of moralistic, punishing, and knowledgeable gods curb biases in favor of the self and the local community, and increase impartiality toward geographically distant anonymous co-religionists. Our sample includes 591 participants from eight diverse societies – iTaukei (indigenous) Fijians who practice both Christianity and ancestor worship, the animist Hadza of Tanzania, Hindu Indo-Fijians, Hindu Mauritians, shamanist-Buddhist Tyvans of southern Siberia, traditional Inland and Christian Coastal Vanuatuans from Tanna, and Christian Brazilians from Pesqueiro. In this article, we present cross-cultural evidence that addresses this question and discuss the implications and limitations of our project. This volume also offers detailed, site-specific reports to provide further contextualization at the local level.
Measuring religious costs and rewards in a cross-cultural perspective
The assumption of rationally motivated individual religious behavior was tested in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural/religious environments: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and the United States of America. In particular, an attempt was made to explain readiness to bear religious costs by the expectation of otherworldly rewards and some other variables, such as religious socialization, support in the upbringing of children, religious capital, satisfaction with religious services and the perceived social sanctions for possible religious nonparticipation. It was found that it is the otherworldly rewards in all the samples that explain by far the major part of the variance in the readiness to bear religious costs. These results suggest that individuals do tend to make rational choices even when it comes to religion. Based on their beliefs, they are ready to accept religious costs approximately to the level of their expectation of otherworldly rewards.
Psychological Bulletin Religion and Morality
2014
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose "religion" and "morality" into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts-in particular, sanitized conceptions of "prosocial" behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories "religion" and "morality" must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.
Religiosity in the major religious cultures of the world
International Journal of Sociology
Compared to other cross-national surveys, the religion-modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) include a larger number of indicators on individual religiosity and thus allow for more differentiated analyses of cross-national differences. In this paper, we use these findings to point out in which ways the forms and development of religiosity differ between the major religious cultures of the world. In order to have a sufficient number of cases for all geographical macro-regions, three data sources were used: ISSP 2018 data from 37 countries, the 2018 Templeton survey that fielded ISSP 2018 survey questions in another 10 non-European countries, and data from the ISSP 2008 religion module for 10 countries that did not participate in ISSP 2018. The comparison covers three dimensions: religious affiliation and non-affiliation, private and public forms of religious practice, and different types of religious beliefs. In the final section, we discuss what conclusions can be drawn from the results with regard to the secularization thesis, i.e., the assumption that socioeconomic modernization leads to a decline in individual religiosity.
Religious institutions serve as a primary source of values, morals, and ethics and these institutions, in turn, have directed much of their notice and resources toward the validation and enforcement of moral mandates. Religion offers an ideal testing ground for value construction. Since the 1940s, social scientists have gathered a huge volume of data on religious behavior, leaving us in better position to evaluate the moral impact of religions than that of other institutions. When it comes to the question of values, religion enjoys the dual distinction as the topic most relevant and least studied. Aim of the Study The following sections attend to a series of related questions: What sorts of values and value-related behaviors do religions seek out to change? What means do religions utilize to frame these values and behaviors? Do religions really influence values? Why do some religions have more effect on their members than do others? And, what do the experiences of religious institutions inform about the confines to indoctrination and value construction? Religious Mandates Religion & other institutions Nearly all institutions, to varying extents, work to articulate and inculcate values-families, firms, schools, political organizations, military components, and even jails. But no one is so devoted to this project as are religions. Religions represent the quintessential example of what Etzioni (1975:66) has called "the normative organization." Other institutions conceal their efforts to maneuver people"s preferences; religions proudly declare their role in the transformation of hearts and minds. Other institutions recognize the restricted character of their claim on individuals; religions pronounce demands of unrestrained scope and extraordinary detail. Other institutions govern behavior through coercive force or compensatory payment; religions aim to achieve acquiescence through appeals to what is good and correct (though their normative pleas are often supported with bribes and threats). The Efficiency Argument Religions appear willing to observe virtually any group of behavior in terms of ethical imperatives like diet, dress, and grooming; sexual demeanor, reproduction, and family life; rest, leisure, and social interactions; education; commerce, political acts; and, of course, all ways of specifically religious undertakings, such as prayer, church attendance, tithing, and plentiful of public and private ceremonies. The functional rationale for many religious imperatives is apparent: "You shall not kill. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal. Neither shall you Abstract Whether God created man or man invented God, religious beliefs has demonstrated their potency of incessantly impacting human behaviour. It controls the actions humans take to formulate better informed decisions. Religion is influential because it does not only organize one individual, but rather govern clans, flocks, groups, and communities. Knowledge of religion and power are intrinsically connected, as knowledge augments, so does the power one have to manage and control. The elemental impact of religion on human behaviour is the very act of worship. Praying is influential because when one is in a state of prayer he/she is in charge of his/her own thought and in his/her own being. The article tends to look into these essential links and its overwhelming influence on human conduct and behaviour.
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts—in particular, sanitized conceptions of “prosocial” behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories “religion” and “morality” must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Why do moral religions exist? An influential psychological explanation is that religious beliefs in supernatural punishment is cultural group adaptation enhancing prosocial attitudes and thereby large-scale cooperation. An alternative explanation is that religiosity is an individual strategy that results from high level of mistrust and the need for individuals to control others’ behaviors through moralizing. Existing evidence is mixed but most works are limited by sample size and generalizability issues. The present study overcomes these limitations by applying k-fold cross-validation on multivariate modeling of data from >295,000 individuals in 108 countries of the World Values Surveys and the European Value Study. First, this methodology reveals no evidence that European and non-European religious people invest more in collective actions and are more trustful of unrelated conspecifics. Instead, the individuals’ level of religiosity is found to be weakly but positively associate...
The Cultural Evolution of Religion
Society, Technology, Language, and Religion, 2013
Religion may be one factor that enabled large-scale complex human societies to evolve. Utilizing a cultural evolutionary approach, this chapter seeks explanations for patterns of complexity and variation in religion within and across groups, over time. Properties of religious systems (e.g., rituals, ritualized behaviors, overimitation, synchrony, sacred values) are examined at different social scales, from small-scale forager to large-scale urban societies. The role of religion in transitional societies is discussed, as well as the impact of witchcraft, superhuman policing, and the cultural evolution of moralizing gods. The shift from an imagistic to a doctrinal mode of religiosity is examined, as are the relationships between sacred values and secular worlds. Cultural evolutionary approaches to religion require evidence and methods from collaborative and multidisciplinary science. The chapter concludes with an overview of several projects that are working to provide conceptual, methodological, and empirical groundwork.
A test of functional theories of religion in a non-western sample
2019
Scholars of religion have long pondered why humans believe in supernatural agents and participate in religious rituals. Some propose that religious features evolved as adaptations for a range of functions, such as alleviating insecurity, structuring social support and cooperating in large groups. Most work in this area has been conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries, in times of relative resource abundance. This thesis uses religious survey and behavioural economic methods to investigate variation in religiosity and cooperation and test a range of functional explanations for religion in non-WEIRD societies, and in times of relative abundance and crisis. Fieldwork in 2014 in Christian and indigenous Kastom religious groups on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu, revealed that belief in an increasingly punitive deity predicted higher monetary offers to outgroup members but not coreligionists. Further fieldwork in 2015 allowed the same measures to be collected following the devastation of Cyclone Pam. Comparison of pre-vs post-cyclone data showed a general decrease in prosociality and more parochial giving to religious ingroup. Post-cyclone giving depended on the level and nature of affectedness; property damage predicted reduced prosociality and parochial giving, whereas exposure to others in distress predicted higher offers to coreligionists and outgroups. Cyclone experience did not predict changes in post-cyclone religiosity and religiosity did not buffer against perceived food insecurity. However, greater personal commitment to one's moralistic god predicted giving less to outgroup members and more parochial giving after the cyclone. Collaboration with the Cultural Evolution of Religion Consortium allowed investigation into functional explanations for putative gender differences in religiosity across a global sample of 14 societies. Women generally showed greater religiosity towards moralistic (but not local) gods. However, the clearest mediator of this gender gap was formal education, consistent with a general process of secularization rather than proposed functional accounts. Overall, the research presented in this thesis suggests individual experiences during a resource shock calibrate prosociality towards religious ingroups and outgroups. Individual religiosity predicted cooperation beyond the religious ingroup in times of plenty and more parochial giving in times of need. Less support was found for religion's function as a coping mechanism, be it in response to resource shocks or as an explanation of gender differences in religiosity. v List of publications from this thesis Vardy, T., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2019). Property damage and exposure to others in distress differentially predict prosocial behaviour following a natural disaster. Psychological Science.
Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences
Religiousness and spirituality are important in the study of psychology for several reasons: They are central to identity and values; they have been reported as being positively associated with health and well-being; and they capture (and perhaps lead to) the largest measurable psychological differences between societies. At five items, the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) is an efficient measure, which advantageously distinguishes between religious sentiment and activity, and between formal versus private involvement. This project extends its internal validation throughout the world, with formal tests of measurement invariance in three languages in Namibia (Study 1) and in a global sample of 26 countries (Study 2). Results confirmed a two-subscale factorial structure of Religious Activity (combining organizational and non-organizational activities) and Intrinsic Religiosity in Namibia and in half of the 26-country samples. In 13 other countries, fit was best for a one-factor ...